Chris Zacharias worked at Youtube right? The hilarious thing about this article is that where he says Front-End Engineers he actually means web designers, and Google doesn't have them. It seems obvious to me that to have a good looking website you need good artists, and that #2 and #4 are such revelations speaks volumes to Google's overall lack of respect for that kind of thing.
Though Developer/Test Driven Design seems to be working out for them.
Web designer != Front-End Developer. For me the distinction is in the use of graphical tools. If you spend your day working in Photoshop for part of the time and you're not just slicing - you're a designer.
The front-end developer takes the design and builds it in code. All of it - code, styles, interaction, etc. There are web designers who are also front-end developers and vice versa, but the roles are not equivalent and they require different skillsets.
I mean what I said when I use the term Front-End Engineer. The people who have built the parts of YouTube that you touch on a daily basis fit very nicely within the traits I have outlined and I would most certainly call them engineers through-and-through. They sometimes have to design elements on a page. They sometimes have to code back-end services and infrastructure. They have to run the gamut between the disciplines of web design and computer science on a daily basis. I would NOT say that Google lacks respect for web design. I am saying that finding people who are hybrids of web design and computer science IS extremely challenging, even for Google.
Though Developer/Test Driven Design seems to be working out for them.